


I am just a Poor Boy

by incredibly_cold, montynavarrno



Series: The Hamfam goes to college [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Homophobic family, M/M, Trans Character, Trans James Madison, Transphobic family, Unsafe Binding Techniques, characters with epilepsy, not even an asshole at all really, thomas jefferson not as big an asshole as he could be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6463993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incredibly_cold/pseuds/incredibly_cold, https://archiveofourown.org/users/montynavarrno/pseuds/montynavarrno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Madison was the kind of man who didn't talk much about his personal life. There were a lot of things that a lot of people didn't know about him, and he was comfortable that way. He always thought that if people knew everything, they wouldn't like him any more. Sometimes it was nice to be proved wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am just a Poor Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter was written by my friend who has been coming up with ideas/writing for this au with me. She doesn't have an Ao3 account, but you can follow her at comicbookward.tumblr.com (but really you should follow her, she's great.) Chapter title is from The Boxer by Mumford and Sons

When she was fifteen, Ruth Madison was not a happy girl.  
  
As a matter of fact, Ruth was not a happy girl because she was not a girl at all. She had never quite adhered to the so-called gender binary.  
  
Even when she was little, she never conformed to gender norms. Getting her to wear a dress was a struggle. When Ruth was little, she attributed it to dresses not being comfortable. Once she hit puberty, it was because she didn't like the way she looked.  
  
When she was fifteen, she heard the word transgender for the first time in her life. Her parents were discussing it at the table, and said that "the damn transgender people were messing with the Christian ideals of our nation."  
  
She didn't know what to make of that. She wasn't entirely sure what a transgender person was.  
  
That night, Ruth looked up transgender people on the Internet. She learned that the basic definition of transgender was a person who didn't identify as the gender they were born with. For the time, that simple definition was good enough for her, and she rarely thought about it after that.  
  
When she was sixteen, her friend John Jay declared that he wanted to go by she, her, and hers pronouns, and that her name was now Rey Jay.  
  
Ruth's parents told her not to interact with John anymore.  
  
In an odd act of defiance, Ruth continued to hang out with John. Ruth always made sure to call her  
Rey. It seemed like the polite thing to do.  
  
When Ruth was seventeen, she called Rey in a panic in the middle of the night. She hated her body, and needed to do something about it. She didn't know what was going on. She felt like she was trapped in the wrong body, and it freaked her out.  
  
Rey eventually calmed Ruth down, and asked her what was wrong with her body. Ruth explained (while being embarrassed) that she didn't like the curves her body had, and that she wished she had anything else.  
  
Rey was quiet for a little bit, and then told Ruth to look up gender dysphoria, then bid her goodnight, as Rey had a debate tournament the next day.  
  
Curious, Ruth looked up gender dysphoria, and found that it was a response to being uncomfortable with one's body due to issues with the gender they were assigned at birth, and that often times transgender people experienced gender dysphoria.  
  
Ruth stayed up the entire night reading articles about transgender people, and found several blogs run by transgender for transgender people.  
  
That was the night Ruth began to learn that she probably wasn't cisgender, a new term she had learned meaning somebody that was comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth.  
  
She kept this new information to herself for a week. Then she told Rey that she was fairly sure she wasn't a girl. She was a demigirl. Rey was excited for her.  
  
Ruth continued to do research on trans issues. She also cut her hair short, much to the annoyance of her parents.  
  
When she was eighteen, Ruth was convinced she wasn't a girl, or a demigirl. Ruth was a boy.  
  
It came after a meeting for trans teens that she attended with Rey. She had lied to her parents in order to go to the meeting with Rey. She was doing that a lot. Her parents were not very supportive of the trans community, so Ruth couldn't tell them anything about what she was experiencing.  
  
Ruth wasn't sure what triggered her realization that she was a boy. It just seemed to happened, and when it did, it was as though the sun had broken through the clouds.  
  
Ruth pretended to be sick the next day so she could do more research on what it meant for her to be trans.  
  
It didn't mean much at first. All she knew was that she didn't like her name anymore, and wanted a new one.  
  
She spent most of the day researching names for herself. Eventually, she decided on one.  
  
The next day, Ruth went up to Rey and said "Hello Rey, my name is James, it's a pleasure to meet you."  
  
Rey grinned, and clapped James on the back. "Welcome to school, James. Come on, I'll show you around. But first, can I ask your pronouns?"  
  
James grinned back, and said "Why, thank you for asking. I use he, him, and his pronouns, thanks."  
  
And with that, James Madison emerged.  
  
James came out to his family halfway through his second semester of college when he was nineteen.  
  
His mother cried. His father went red in rage, and yelled that he had raised James better than this.  
  
James left the house crying, and went back to his dorm on campus.  
  
He briefly passed one of the boys from his Intro to Governement class on the stairwell. The boy (James thought his name was Thomas) tried to ask him what was wrong, but James brushed him off. He was lucky to be able to afford a single person dorm.  
  
At the end of his first year in college, James' family cut him off from their finances.  
  
James was lucky enough to have saved enough money for another semester of college, and immediately applied for scholarships and a loan.  
  
In the first semester of James' second year of college, he learned about binding.  
  
It was a way for him to make it seem as though he had a flat chest. James was lucky enough to have a deep voice and small hips. He hid the rest of his curves by wearing baggy clothes all the time.  
  
Unfortunately for James, he didn't know that binding with ace bandages was a bad idea.  
  
James began binding with ace bandages near the end of the semester. He also began hanging out more and more with Thomas Jefferson, the boy who had asked why he was crying when he had come out to his family.  
  
Thomas and James had their first date two weeks before classes were over for the semester.  
  
Dating had always made James nervous. Dating Thomas was something else. Thomas Jefferson was beautiful, and very intimidating.  
  
James was also madly in love with him, and in his haste to get to dinner on time, he forgot to take his medication.  
  
James had had epilepsy most of his life. Once he started taking medication, he had very few seizures. But if he forgot to take his meds, he was in for a world of hurt.  
  
The dinner went well, and Thomas walked James back to his dorm. They talked for a few minutes outside his door, and then Thomas leaned in for a kiss.  
  
James' heart rate soared, and then he felt the beginnings of a seizure start.  
  
Normally, the seizures weren't so bad as long as he could breathe. Unfortunately for James, his ace bandage binder made it very difficult for him to breathe.  
  
Thomas had known that James had epilepsy. James had had one other seizure before, in freshman year when the stress of finals had gotten to him and he had one in class.  
  
Thomas did not know that James was trans, and that he was wearing a binder.  
  
Thomas had some basic medical training, and James had told him what to do if he had a seizure.  
  
The important thing for James was to be able to breathe. Seeing that James was unable to breathe, Thomas tried unbuttoning his shirt to make it easier for his chest to expand. Upon doing this, Thomas noticed the ace bandage.  
  
Without hesitating, Thomas ripped the fasteners on the ace bandage off. James sucked in a large breath.  
  
Thomas waited for the next few minutes for James to stop seizing. Eventually, a few minutes after the seizure stopped, Thomas helped James into his room.  
  
James immediately went to lay on his bed. He didn't want talk about it. He hadn't wanted Thomas to find out like this.  
  
Thomas sensed his unwillingness to talk, but stayed in his room to keep an eye on James all the same.  
  
Eventually, James went to sleep.  
  
When he woke up the next morning, the first thing he saw was Thomas asleep in the chair across the room, book on his chest.  
  
James got up, movements slow, and went to wake up Thomas.  
  
Still not ready to talk about the previous night, James suggested they go and get breakfast together.  
  
After a few minutes of eating in silence, James said "So, I'm transgender."  
  
Thomas paused in his chewing, mouth full of scrambled eggs. He didn't say anything, but his raised eyebrows clearly said "Yeah, no duh."  
  
James shifted uncomfortably. "I was going to tell you eventually. It's just..."  
  
Thomas interrupted him. "You weren't sure how I was going to react."  
  
James nodded. "The last time I came out to somebody, it didn't go so well."  
  
"Who was it?" Thomas asked.  
  
"My parents. They're really conservative, and now they've cut me off. I've got scholarships and a loan, but I don't know..." James dropped his head into his hands. He felt another hand cover his own.  
  
"Well, for starters, you can get a roommate. That'll cut down on expenses." James raised his head to look at Thomas. Thomas was grinning.  
  
"Oh? And who do you suppose would want to put up with me, the weird trans kid?"  
  
"I would." said Thomas, and his grin widened.  
  
"Mr. Jefferson, are you suggesting we move into together?" gasped James dramatically, a smile on his face. "We've only been on one date, and that date ended spectacularly badly."  
  
"On the contrary, my dear Madison.  I got to see you half naked, even if it wasn't under the most desirable circumstances."  
  
James couldn't help it, he laughed. Taking this as his chance to advance farther, Thomas continued speaking. "And besides, I need a roommate who can keep up with my brilliance."  
  
James stopped laughing, and smiled at Thomas. "Well, Mr. Jefferson, I do believe you've found yourself a roommate."  
  
Thomas beamed at him, but then it faded a little. "James, there is one thing I require of you if you are to be my roommate."  
  
James tensed, not knowing what to expect. "What is it?"  
  
"It's not safe to bind with ace bandages. You have to let me buy you a binder. As an executive member of the LGBT+ council here, it'd be a terrible thing to let one of my compatriots get hurt trying to be themselves."  
  
James couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Are you serious? Those are so expensive!"  
  
Jefferson nodded. "But I have the money. You should focus on saving for school."  
  
James gaped at him. He couldn't believe Thomas Jefferson was being this nice to him. "I don't know what to say."  
  
"Don't say anything. Just let me do this for you. As a friend or a boyfriend, whatever." Thomas looked at James softly, an expression James had never seen him wear before. "I don't like to see the people I care about get hurt."  
  
From that point on, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were inseparable. They fought often, but it was never serious.  
  
Thomas helped James save money for school. In return, James debated Thomas' papers with him, and made Thomas into one of the best debaters in the school.  
  
Eventually, James' parents welcomed him back into their lives. He wasn't sure what changed their minds (he suspected his abilities in political studies with an emphasis in agricultural rights had something to do with it. They did live on a large farm after all.) but he was happy to have all the people he loved back in his life.  
  
On the Christmas when he was twenty-one, his parents and Thomas sat him down and told him that they had secured a time for James to have a top surgery done.  
  
James cried. He had struggled with his body image for so long. He had gone to a gender therapist and had started hormones. There wasn't much he could do for his curves, and that bugged him.  
  
It pained Thomas to him James like this, and he had sat down with the rest of the Madison family to figure out a way to fix James' problem.  
  
At the end of the day, it was the best Christmas James had ever had. He was finally going to be comfortable in his body, and he had his family back and a boyfriend who supported him every step of the way. He couldn't have asked for anything more.  
  
James Madison was a very happy man.


End file.
